What is Pollution for Kids?

It
Affects the Environment and Your Health

It
Affects the Environment and Your Health

Pollution is when gases, smoke and
chemicals are introduced into the environment in large doses that makes it
harmful for humans, animals and plants. Some forms of pollution can be seen,
some are invisible.

Our Earth has an atmosphere that’s made up
of different gases. The amount of gases on our atmosphere is just right to
encourage life on our planet. We breathe the air and we thrive on it. Because
of our advances in technology, we are introducing new chemicals into our
atmosphere, causing an imbalance. The most popular effect of this imbalance in
nature is Global Warming.

The
Different Kinds of Pollution

Air
Pollution – The vehicles that we use to get around
such as cars, planes and trucks contribute to air pollution. These vehicles use
fossil fuels, like gas, to power its engines. If you notice the smoke that
comes out of our vehicles, what you are seeing is carbon dioxide. Due to the
large number of vehicles in the world today, we are adding too much carbon
dioxide to our atmosphere, causing the planet’s temperature to rise. This is
the concept behind global warming.

But the toxic smoke coming out of our
vehicles is just a small part of our air pollution problem today. Factories
which are used to produce many of the consumer products we enjoy every day also
give off toxic substances that pollute our air.

Not only does air pollution cause smog, it also
causes sickness such as asthma and other respiratory diseases.

Land
Pollution – Can you imagine how much trash is
produced by 7 billion people? Did you ever think about where the trash goes?
Some of the stuff that we throw away are toxic to our environment, like plastic.
They contain chemicals that can leak into the ground and contaminate the water
we drink. These chemicals can even reach our oceans, rivers and lakes. This is
the reason why you should practice the 3 Rs: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. We are
encouraged to minimize the waste that ends up in the landfills so we won’t
contaminate our environment. If we really need to throw out our stuff, we
should do so properly by bringing them to recycling centers where they can use
the materials to make other new products. This is effective way to manage our waste and keep them from reaching our
landfills.

Water
Pollution – What will we do when we run out of
clean water to drink? What will happen
when the oceans, rivers and lakes are so polluted that all the fish and aquatic
animals die? Water keeps us alive and it’s very important for us to have clean
drinking water. There was a time when we can safely drink from our faucets, but
now, we don’t know if the water is really safe to drink and we buy purified
water in bottles.

Humans are the cause of water pollution,
directly and indirectly. We mindlessly throw our trash in the ocean, not
thinking about what that may cause. Ships that carry oil can have accidents,
spilling all that toxic oil into the ocean, causing havoc in our marine
ecosystem and polluting our waters. Do you know that there are areas in the
Pacific Ocean where there are “islands of trash?”

We need to stop throwing our trash into the
oceans and dispose of them properly on land.

By knowing how our daily activities affect
our environment, we can help reduce pollution in our own small way. Learn more
about the state of our environment by browsing the articles on The World Counts: Stories